Giving you dog plenty of exercise is essential as it keeps down boredom, they say a tired dog is a good dog. What this means is when you are making sure your dog has plenty of exercise and meeting those needs, you will find that your furry friend does not get bored as easy and start finding ways to entertain themselves, such as chewing up couches, chairs or you favorite pair of shoes.

Different breeds of dogs require different levels of exercise and depending on what the expectations are of the breed.  When you are deciding on the type and quality of exercise that you feel your dog needs, know that some dogs such as a Weimaraner that was bred to run or a Treeing Walker Coonhound that is bred for speed and endurance have much different needs than say a lap dog such as a Pekingese or even a Basset Hound. Another thing to look at is the health and age of your dog, an older dog may not require as much exercise as he needed when he was younger.

As you will see below I have put several of the dog breeds into different categories to give you an idea of what level of exercise your dog relates to. When determining the exercise needs for your dog you may consider a runner to need up to two hours of exercise where a stroller will do great with 30 minutes. Understanding your dog’s exercise needs and letting them expend their energy prior to training may make for a better training class and a dog that is more focused on what you are trying to teach them.

Should Your Dog

Have Manners?

One of the important reasons for training revolves around your dog having adequate manners. (And no, we are not talking about passing gas.) Training your dog can teach them to have manners when out in public or with someone coming to your home to visit.

Do you want to have an unruly dog

that you have to put up or throw outside?

When company visits, this can happen If you do not include manners in your training regimen. You might need to train your dog not to jump on people or not grab their pantlegs.

Manners is something that needs to be taught as early as possible. Bad behavior may result in actions that your dog learned when it was a young puppy, and everyone thought was so cute.

As an adult dog, many behaviors are not so cute anymore and can be very annoying and cause the dog to be removed from visitors or with some dog owners the dog ends up at the local pound.

Are Dogs Born With Aggressive Behavior?

Most dogs are born with an aggressive streak and other factors can play a role in escalating the aggression in a dog or combatting it. An aggressive dog can be the result of many factors such as environment, pain, fear, or resource guarding such as food or toys.

Training your dog from home as early as possible will help to de-escalate any aggression that may appear in the future of your dog’s life.

By nature, dogs when confronted have a tendency just as humans to fight or flight, meaning if they feel they are not able to avoid what they see as a problem or threat, they may hold their ground and attack.

Aggression is normally not tolerated; however, can develop over time if the dog owner does not take the measures to train their dog. It is always best when training your dog not to allow any type of aggressive behavior through play, as this may escalate the aggressive behavior and give you dog a signal that this is accepted.

Raising a new dog and teaching your dog should be a rewarding experience. From their young age, dogs are enthusiastic students. It is never too early to start training your dog.

You can begin to teach them immediately from the time you bring them home, failure to do this can lead to putting yourself and others at risk. If you are confused how to start training, you can help your best companion out on how to behave well by training your dog in the topics below.

Chapter 07

Understand Positive and Negative Reinforcement

To begin I want to help you understand that positive and negative is just that, in mathematics we know it as adding or subtracting and in training your dog it works the same way. Positive is simply adding something and negative is taking away something.

Now to explain reinforcement, you want to think of anything that reinforces the behavior in your dog. Something that happens that your dog construes to be beneficial, such as a treat or eliminating pain, fear or anxiety.

When we talk about punishment, people go straight to the thought of punishing your dog for bad behavior and this is true; however, not in the way you might be inclined to think. Punishment is actually something that is removed that your dog finds value in.

Positive Reinforcement Dog Training

Through studies in behavioral science it has been proven that positive reinforcement training is much more effective, and dogs seem to learn quicker in a positive atmosphere. When we think of positive reinforcement, you want to think of this as some type of reward, basically rewarding the dog for the behavior. Rewarding the behavior is adding something to your dog that he likes so he is going to continue that behavior in order to get the positive reinforcement.

Positive reinforcement is introduced by adding value, which in-turn warrants a positive behavior or response. When training our dogs, they want to please us, so this form of training works well. Think about it as a team effort and make it enjoyable for both you and your dog. Training should be fun and fulfilling.

So, how does positive reinforcement turn into positive punishment? If the dog sits, you would normally give him a treat or a pat on the head thinking you are giving him positive attention, but what if you dog does not value a pat on the head and does not like it, this would actually diminish the behavior instead of reinforcing it. This is where a positive can turn into a more of a punishment and why knowing your dog is so important.

Negative Reinforcement Dog Training

Negative reinforcement training can have different aspects and meanings depending on the type of training you are offering your dog. When most people think of negative reinforcement they might think of punishment and in a way, it is, more so with a more traditional training approach than the more scientific approach.

Mostly, when thinking about negative reinforcement most think of the training using shock collars, pinches, and punishment directed to the dog, which in the more modern training has lost all value in how we train our dogs.

In the new modern methods of training your dog, negative reinforcement is taking away something that is negative, take away an action that your dog finds negative such as pain or fear. This might include the time your dog used the dining room floor as a bathroom and you screamed at you dog out of anger, causing fear or anxiety for your dog.

Negative reinforcement would be if it happens again, simply saying No, and rerouting your dog outside to use the bathroom. What this does is removes the fear or anxiety that you caused by screaming at your dog; therefore, creating a situation of negative reinforcement for you dog. You have taken away the fear.

Negative punishment is more of withholding the positive reinforcement, such as no treat unless the dog preforms the correct tasks or turning your back to the dog so they do not have your attention, it may even be walking away from your dog and ignoring him.

By using new positive and negative methods of training helps your dog understand what is expected by relaying to your dog there is value in the action. On the other hand, when the dog does find value in the action that behavior is dwindled down and lessens, and with consistency becomes extinct.

This leads us on the journey to understanding why it is important to understand how to train your dog and what your dog feels is a positive approach and what is punishment, leading us into finding out more about some of the methods to train your dog.

Traditional Dog Training

As Traditional Dog Training goes it is mainly the theory of who is the “leader of the pack” or the “Alpha dog”, going back to the theory of their nature to live in packs such as the wolves.

In this type of training, the trainer would take the role as the alpha, and many times negative behavior is diminished by some type of punishment, depending on the techniques of the trainer.

So, what does this Traditional Training teach the dog? It teaches the dog what not to do with negative consequences, which is still effective, your dog will understand and knows what behaviors are not accepted.

On the flip side, you need to make sure the trainer provides some type of positive training along with the Traditional Training, so your dog learns what is accepted and your dog is not so confused and understand acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

There are many trainers out there still using this type of training and it is believed to still work; however, from what I found can also lead to extreme anxiety in dogs and sometimes even resulting in aggression.

Mirror Training – Dogs learn by mimicking others

Dogs are very observant learners and mimic those around them.

With mirror training you can use a well-trained dog to help your dog learn basic behaviors by working with your dog and the trained dog simultaneously. The dog you are training will watch the behavior of the trained dog and try to mimic the behavior.

What if I don’t have a well-trained dog, how can I use this technique? The mirror training technique can be accomplished with using another human as the example, dogs observe both other dogs and human behaviors. If you teach the other human to sit and the human gets a treat, the dog you are training is more likely to follow suite.

I know this type of training to be true due to potty training a puppy with the hounds we have in the house. We have very rarely had issues trying to potty train our puppies as they are trained mainly by the other dogs. A potty-trained dog goes to the door and the puppy follows, so therefore the puppy learns that going out with the other dogs is where they do their business.